Tim Ballinger

My Frsky dongle arrived yesterday. I was prepared to have to upgrade the firmware to that of my Horus which I upgraded last year but thought nothing of it because the manual had said it could be done by the S port. What I didn’t realise was I had to dissemble the dongle to get at the relevant connections and the make up a lead to do the job. However all worked out . My test was with a Multiplex flight sim demo I had from a few years ago. Ran it on my windows laptop piped through to the TV. I was surprised how real the model behaviour was and it was really good to twiddle some sticks again. Next up is to match the link to PicaSim and see how that feels. If I am still on a roll I might just get something on the iMac as well. Tim

Site appearance is , I think pretty good. Functionality is also pretty good and certainly better than the old site. Last I checked the full search functionality, for me , only worked properly on my iMac and not on my iPad. Generally pretty happy and already reverted to reading model flying posts rather than site issues. Tim

Things improved when I changed to mode 1 which is my normal set up. What I can not yet get used to is not being able to move my line of sight in az and el particularly when you gain some height. Couple that with no control feedback and my fingers having moved completely off the control area and I am getting a lot plane ground interactions ! Tim

I have just tried PicaSim on my iPad as it was only £3. Actually quite impressed with the realism and range of models. I was actually interested because it boasted an extensive range of gliders/soaring options which indeed it has and quite realistic. Downside for the iPad is that it is touch screen controlled which atm is a nightmare for me as I was not brought up on computer games! Might well give the PC aversion a go when I get my dongle and Tx hooked up. Thanks for the heads up on PicaSim Jonathan. Tim

Suitably inspired I have just invested in the FrSky RF dongle. Think I have an old sim on my windows laptop to try before I invest in anything new. Not been too impressed with graphics I have seen in captured videos of sims so far. They all seem to lack realistic perspective. Perhaps the live sim will be better. Tim

Plenty of OpenTx gurus on the forum ( not me !) who will be glad to help and keep you ? Tim

None taken Gary, I knew what you were doing. ? I was just impressed all our spell checkers coped with gobbledegook! Tim

I can confirm that the MacOS adds extra files ( recovery files/folders rings a bell ) when you write to a file system eg an SD card or flash drive. These generally do not cause a problem when Windows reads the drive. However if memory serves correct the code that picks up the OS executable file from the firmware folder only ever expects a single file. If more exist it does not execute until the offending xtra files are deleted. In my experience it is easiest to undertake the deletion of the unwanted files you create on the SD card with a windows OS. While I use companion for reading and displaying telemetry logs I only run the FrSky OS on my Horus so can not fully answer your question. That said I can happily add image files for example directly to the SD from the Mac. If I want to add new firmware then I will generally use my old windows laptop to transfer files and use the standard FrSky OS to do the rest. As an aside I have not yet found a text to speech module on the Mac that produces the correct audio format while there are several on Windows that do the job; so again I use the Windows laptop for that job. hope some of that helps. All from memory as I type so hopefully I have remembered correctly. Tim

Wayne, never occurred to me you could edit a quote. You certainly managed to turn my words into amusing gobbledegook without much hassle ! ? Not sure there would be an easy fix for that so I think you just have to trust forum members or loose the ability to quote. Think I would go with trust on that one. ? Tim

I thought a bit about this when it was first raised but decided I did not feel strongly enough either way. However, I think there is a point to be made that as soon as you post either words or pictures to a forum like this then actually should you really have any expectation of privacy. It is not as if it is a private data store; it is a public domain. Certainly to be protected in so much as no one else can edit content . That’s certainly the way I use/view the forum. I see Steve’s point but not sure too many folks would orchestrate their content in such a way. I know I don’t and the new found ability to upload direct to a blog probably does all I need as it misses out the uploading to the album loop. No big issue for me either way just thought that the alternative thought should be out there. Tim

I’ll second that Eric. I don’t attend all of them ,just pick topics of interest. I enjoyed the GPS triangle presentation last week and will certainly watch part 2. Tim

RW We share the pain but we are all hoping it gets improved as we all learn . Tim

I may be behind the curve in in investigating image handling but i thought I was reading that it was not possible to delete photos ( old or new) . On both my iPad and iMac aside from the manage image menu which only allows it to be added as a profile picture; over to the right there is the 'traditional' cog wheel which has a drop down ,menu for deletion. Bit clunky as it is only 1 image at a time and it dumps you out of the images folder but it does work. Is that there for everybody ? Tim

Chris tried all that and it does not make any difference. HOWEVER... When I tried yesterday and thought it worked I was on my iMac. Just gone back to my iMac and tried again. It works perfectly . You can search for any exact string by using quotes as indicated in the search dialogue and per most normal search engines. Same search on my iPad and it does not work. I actually tried the BARCS site as well which uses the same software. Same result. Works on my iMac but not my iPad. Conclusion : There is a platform specific gremlin in the search software that is not specific to this instance of the new software. Hope that is some use to someone. Tim

I actually posted yesterday that I thought the search facility was really good. I had tried a few simple searches and all seemed good. I tried searching for a specific string I knew existed in an old post of mine. I typed in “Longest scarf” and it duly returned the correct post. I should have tested further , it was not finding the exact phrase, it just so happened that was the only post where longest and scarf occurred in the same post. I can not now work out if there exists some syntax that allows an exact phrase to be matched. It looks like quoting should do the job but it doesn’t. Hopefully this can be elaborated on in due course. Tim

Graham’s question has peeked my interest now! Thanks Ron/Jonathan Interesting. One for and one so so. Just as your replies came in I found a whole thread devoted to Aero fly on Rcgroups. not sure if a copy will work but I’ll give it a go https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?3257613-AeroFly-RC8-Airplane-Heli-simulator-Users-thread/page3 Tim

I see there is something called Aero fly rc8 on the App Store. Not a huge amount of info on interfaces and at £125 you really need to find someone who has tried it. Tim

Interested to see if anyone comes up with anything. I have only undertaken a few half hearted searches over the years but never found anything useful. I created a windows10 partition on my iMac so I suppose running a sim on that would work ............ Tim

Ron, Should we have to? , is a good question. For me the answer is yes because I like to have things tailored to suit me. If everyone liked what I like then I would be happy of course but the world would probably be a sadder place ! So in terms of the forum I am very happy to spend some time setting preferences in order to get what I want. If you want something modern that tries to suit all tastes then you need versatility in operation. When AI finally cracks mind reading all will be well, until then we will need to set preferences. Tim

Phil, Perhaps I never got to grips with the old search engine. Now I can search for an exact string if I want to by suitable quoting , I can use standard search logic to link strings and authors to the string I’m searching. There is probably more capability I am yet to find. Tim

Not seen all the items I note below highlighted ( sorry if they have) so I thought it might be worthwhile a not so quick post ! Yes it’s a big change and yes there’s some preferences to set up to match an individuals aspirations, that said i think it is a great improvement. When David asked for input as to what features we wanted my reply was a better search tool and easier multi media handling in posts. We now have that.? Like many I was initially blown away by the amount of content and difficulty in browsing to what I wanted. So setting the preferences and tailoring the default stream sorted most of that but some more steps and ? were needed. The condensed button gives you the one line view of an update, I had missed that for some reason. That certainly made it easier to assimilate. I agree with the comments that the advertising banner could be smaller and the surrounding white space reduced but I can wait for more important stuff to be finished first. I could not understand why even having set my pref to go to the last post in a thread why it didn’t and on some occasions even went to parent topic leaving me a lot of scrolling. The answer was it all depends where you click. If you click on a name or avitar you will get a persons profile, click on the topic , you get all the threads in the topic. I finally stumbled across what I wanted when I just clicked on the time displayed since the last update or on the number of views. Hey presto it went straight to the last update which is what I wanted.? So more to learn but it is now looking manageable again. Well done all those taking the time to help us all discover what is we want . Tim